Living in an underdeveloped part of the city called Hackney, Mo (Fady Elsayed) is a good kid who respects his dad, watches Bollywood movies on the telly to humor his mom, gets good grades in school and seems destined for a better life, which his handsome, independent older brother Rashid (James Floyd) encourages, saving money to send Mo to college. But Rashid can’t escape the lure, or the pitfalls, of his environment, dealing drugs and playing a pivotal role in the illegal activities of a street gang called DMG (Drugs, Money, Guns). After one of his friends is murdered by a rival gang, Rashid begins to see the futility of his lifestyle. A new friendship with a photographer from Paris named Sayyid (Saïd Taghmaoui) further broadens his perspective. Sayyid convinces him there are cultural pursuits he has never experienced. To Mo’s astonishment, the brother he always worshiped suddenly wears a tie, looks for a job and reads Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet—transformations Mo witnesses with mixed emotions. But it’s not until Mo sees Rashid in bed with Sayyid that his own world falls apart. “I’d rather my brother was a terrorist than a homo,” says Mo. As his loyalty diminishes, he moves closer to the life Rashid used to shelter him from. Lonely and sad, he turns to drink and cocaine, and the closer he gets to the thugs and crackheads in Rashid’s old gang, the closer he gets to inevitable tragedy.

Rashid’s conversion to homosexuality is vague and unconvincing. But the direction by Ms. Hosaini, who is herself of Egyptian descent, is sensitive, offering vital contrasts between the family values of the brothers’ Egyptian heritage and the crime-propelled lifestyle they live in outside their home. The actors are all splendid, especially James Floyd, who I predict has a rich career in future films, and the award-winning cinematography by David Raedeker really transports you to a claustrophobic part of London you will never see as a tourist. Already a big hit in the U.K., My Brother the Devil may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s heady stuff for those who like something stronger than Earl Grey.

rreed@observer.com

MY BROTHER THE DEVIL

Running Time 111 minutes

Written and Directed by Sally El Hosaini

Starring James Floyd, Fady Elsayed and Saïd Taghmaoui

Though set in an earlier time, the material covered in Leonie is cut from the same fabric as Bridge to the Sun, the 1961 biopic about Gwen Terasaki starring Carroll Baker as the headstrong Southern girl who married a Japanese diplomat and survived the horrors of life as an outsider in Japan during World War II. Leonie begins in 1901, when the Bryn Mawr graduate goes to work as the New York editor of the talented but still-unknown poet, reluctantly becoming his mentor, co-writer and devoted life partner. Abandoned when she becomes pregnant, she follows Yone (Shidô Nakamura from Clint Eastwood’s Letters From Iwo Jima) to Japan, understanding nothing of the language or culture, and after discovering that Yone already has a Japanese wife, she raises their son Isamu alone, earning a meager income as an English teacher. A firm believer that women ought to have the same rights, responsibilities and freedoms as men, Leonie fights an uphill battle at a time when interracial marriage is not only frowned on but forbidden in America and a social disgrace in Japan. The misery in her own relationship, the joy in her son’s progress—these elements of the story are told through letters to her best friend Catherine (Christina Hendricks, the sexpot office manager on Mad Men). It’s an awkward conceit, and a more traditional narrative form would have been more cinematically satisfying. But what Leonie learns, about customs, rituals and art, and what she teaches, about strength, independence and dignity, are a source of enlightenment for her friends, enemies and students. Especially the talisman she lives by: “When everything else fails, there is always the future.”

With no formal schooling, her son’s unconventional education makes him sort of an early child genius. He designs and builds his first entire house at age 10 for his family, which now includes a baby sister (father unknown). Using his American citizenship to attend school in New York, the boy learns that there are no boundaries and no borders in art. Small wonder that his mother’s influence gave him the drive to become one of the world’s most renowned sculptors and architects until his death in 1988. Alas, there are times when the life of a vagabond woman bridging the gaps between continents, cultures and wars proves too complex and too conflicted to keep the audience focused, which might explain why Leonie has been gathering dust on the editing-room shelf since 2010. Still, it’s a remarkable portrait of a brave, uncompromising woman who maintained her identity and spirit against all odds. Directed by Hisako Matsui and gorgeously shot in the rainy streets of New Orleans, the cherry orchards of Japan and the orange groves of California by acclaimed Japanese cinematographer Tetsuo Nagata, Leonie is a rich tapestry of cross-cultural revelations, released to the public at last, and a welcome addition to an otherwise dreary movie season.

rreed@observer.com

LEONIE

Running Time 102 minutes

Written by Hisako Matsui, David Wiener and Masayo Duus (biography)

Directed by Hisako Matsui

Starring Emily Mortimer, Kazuko Yoshiyuki and Shidô Nakamura

Emmy Rossum in Beautiful Creatures.

As Dorothy Parker used to say, “What fresh hell is this?” Goodbye, Harry Potter and the flying broomsticks at Hogwarts. Hello, lovesick witches in South Carolina. Desperately seeking the next idiotic supernatural teenage box-office bonanza to replace the hormonally challenged vampires and oversexed werewolves of the Twilight series, writer-director Richard LaGravenese has dragged out of mothballs Beautiful Creatures, the corny combo of Satanism and Valentine’s Day by Margaret Stohl and Kami Garcia. Its cult precedes it, so writing about it is little more than a formality. This is the kind of movie that can only be reviewed by a 14-year-old critic chewing gum.

Gatling, South Carolina, has 12 churches and not a single Starbucks. Living a life standing still is Ethan Wate (promising newcomer Alden Ehrenreich), a bright, imaginative 17-year-old high school kid who dreams of college as an escape from a one-horse town where even The Catcher in the Rye is locked in the library on the condemned reading list. He also dreams about a mysterious Lorelei who lures him into recurring nightmares in the middle of a Civil War battlefield. One day, she actually walks into his class—a new girl in town named Lena Duchannes (Alice Englert), who lives with her uncle Macon Ravenwood (where do they come up with these names?) in a decaying old mansion with a reputation as a haunted house. In fact, the born-again Christians in town are all convinced Lena and her family are “casters,” or Satan worshipers. This gives the teenage bitches a chance to say things like, “She looks like Death eatin’ a cracker.”

Ethan doesn’t care. The minute Lena narrows her eyes and blows the glass windows out of the school, he’s in love. Ignoring the advice of anyone who ever saw Bette Midler in Hocus Pocus, he hikes over to Ravenwood Manor. Outside, it’s a decaying old mansion covered with vines. Then the door creaks open to reveal a fabulous black-and-white set from an old Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musical. Lena’s Uncle Macon turns out to be Jeremy Irons wearing a floor-length waistcoat over white silk Oriental pajamas, like Liberace. (Clichés overwhelm: there’s even a grand piano, with a candelabra.) Eventually, Ethan meets the whole family—Lena’s long-dead mother Sarafine, who takes the form of the town’s most bigoted dowager (Emma Thompson), the creepy grandmother (Eileen Atkins), the bulbous aunt (Margo Martindale) and Lena’s evil cousin Ridley from the Dark Side (Emmy Rossum), who drives a flashy red convertible and sleeps around, with fatal results. Pity the poor highway cop who tries to give her a speeding ticket. They’re all preparing for Lena’s 16th birthday, when it will be decided whether she turns into a dark witch or a good witch. The only person who can save her and break the curse is Ethan, but it is written in the secret book with the invisible writing that a human cannot love a caster. Did I fail to mention it all happens during the town’s annual Civil War picnic?

Myriad questions abound. Mainly, why doesn’t anybody wonder why all the people at Ravenwood Manor have British accents? The best performance in Beautiful Creatures is by the rangy, talented Mr. Ehrenreich, who is really going places as an actor. A coven of good actors exemplifies the movie motto “Slumming Can Be Fun”—except for Jeremy Irons, who is so overwrought and campy he seems to be on an overdose of Boris Karloff. The movie doesn’t know if it’s a teen fantasy-romance or a more sophisticated satire that the material can’t support. The funniest thing in the movie is when the witches confess they used to live in Washington, D.C., until they were banished by Nancy Reagan—the only mortal they were afraid of. More laughs are expected in the next two installments of what threatens to become a trilogy. It’s early, but I’m already making plans to be out of town.

rreed@observer.com

BEAUTIFUL CREATURES

Running Time 123 minutes

Written by Richard LaGravenese (screenplay), Kami Garcia (novel) and Margaret Stohl (novel)

Directed by Richard LaGravenese

Starring Alice Englert, Viola Davis and Emma Thompson

Watts.

Put a staggering accomplishment called The Impossible, from Spanish director J. A. Bayona, at the top of the season’s must-see list. This intense nerve-shredder about a vacationing family separated in the violent and unexpected Indian Ocean tsunami that struck the southeast coast of Asia on Dec. 26, 2004, is the most wrenching disaster movie in decades. It’s also true, brilliantly acted by a gifted and dedicated cast and one of the best films about physical and emotional survival ever made. I first saw it at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, and I still haven’t recovered. The outline is deceptively simple: an everyday family (Ewan McGregor, Naomi Watts and their three children) flies to Thailand to spend Christmas vacation in a comfortable resort villa with an ocean view in Khao Lak. They check in, unpack, share a Christmas dinner, open presents and slip into their bathing suits to go snorkeling in water as colorful and adventurous as the guidebooks promised. Then, on the morning after Christmas, the electricity fails, followed by the odd sound of a distant rumble. It increases to a roar, but there’s no plane overhead. For dozens of vacationing Westerners relaxing by the pool, there’s no time to fully comprehend what’s happening before the tsunami is upon them, rising from the sea in a screaming wall of water as forceful as Niagara Falls. Filmed with 3D sound, the destruction of paradise by 98-foot-high waves (not recycled newsreel footage), which lasts 10 minutes, is terrifying, as children are knocked unconscious by flying automobiles and left to float away in the detritus of uprooted palm trees and falling power lines. But the aftermath is even more harrowing, as distraught parents search frantically for lost children and hysterical children wander through the rubble looking for missing parents. Mr. Bayona, the exciting young director who turned the stylishly creepy 2007 ghost story The Orphanage into one of the highest-grossing Spanish films of all time, makes the chaos and carnage of the tidal wave as visceral and overwhelming as anything in The Rains Came, Green Dolphin Street, The Hurricane or Earthquake. Rarely have I seen so much massive destruction staged so effectively. But after the bravura effects end, the human elements begin, and raw emotions take over as families pray for reunion among the overcrowded emergency rooms and unidentified corpses. Based on the actual experiences of tsunami survivors Maria and Henry Belon and their children, the nuanced screenplay by Sergio Sanchez gets everything right. Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts, in two of the most rewarding roles of their careers, turn The Impossible into a life-affirming experience.

As the distressed British-born businessman father working for a firm in Japan, broken and bloody, clinging to two younger sons and praying that the rest of his family is still alive, Ewan McGregor has never been more appealing or more vulnerable. As his noble, heroic doctor wife instinctively trying to help others despite her own injuries, Naomi Watts gets a punishing workout. Climbing trees with two displaced children in her arms, swimming to safety through dead fish and rotting cadavers while her oldest son stays by her side on their agonizing journey through the ruins to a makeshift hospital, Ms. Watts seems almost spiritually committed to her role. The children are wonderful, especially a compelling young actor named Tom Holland, who makes an impressive debut as the brave, heartbreaking boy forced to shoulder responsibilities beyond his age and comprehension as he tries to save his mother’s life in the absence of a father. The entire cast achieves monumental heights of honesty and integrity in an unforgettable film that combines epic spectacle with the intimacy of loving relationships in a celebration of the invincible human spirit.

rreed@observer.com

THE IMPOSSIBLE

Running Time 107 minutes

Written by Sergio G. Sánchez

Directed by Juan Antonio Bayona

Starring Naomi Watts, Ewan McGregor and Tom Holland

Huppert.

It’s always reassuring to see a nutty director go straight. Austria’s Michael Haneke is famous for his lurid, violent and thoroughly sick exercises in torture and sexual depravity. Wait a sec. Did I say famous? Only to the occasional film festival audience. The public has avoided him like a dose of swine flu. Who sat through a pair of homicidal maniacs slicing and dicing up a family in their summer vacation home on a deserted lake in Funny Games, a film he loved so much he made it twice? Or the sight of Isabelle Huppert in La Pianiste, making love to her mother before slicing off her own genitals with a razor blade? No, I’m afraid Mr. Haneke’s career has thus far existed only in the “asylum home movies” department.

All of that is about to change. Amour has set the critics drooling, this time for the right reasons. Beautifully acted, sensitively written and uncommonly refined, this delicate portrait of an elderly couple struggling with fate, mortality and immortal devotion breathes clarity and passion into the verboten subject of old age without the usual attendant sentimental soap opera clichés. This is due, in a large part, to the vibrant talents of two beloved veterans of classic French cinema—Jean-Louis Trintignant (memorable in Bertolucci’s The Conformist,among others) and the incandescent Emmanuelle Riva (of Resnais’s Hiroshima, mon amour). Probably neither of them ever thought they would live to see the day when their hair was gone and the apple wouldn’t bite. I’m so glad they hung in there. They’re worth waiting for.

They play Anne and Georges, a pair of octogenarian musicians who have been married for decades, their careers largely behind them but their future together in old age cloudless and optimistic. One night, they return home from a concert to find their apartment robbed and their privacy invaded. Anne is so unnerved by the intrusion that the next morning she suffers a small stroke that turns out to be the beginning of a physical and mental decline. Paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair, she succumbs to her illness while Georges attempts to care for her at home. Each day presents a new challenge, as they deal with the evolution of senior surrender—immobility, dementia, incontinence. But no matter what cards they are dealt by the devils who nurse our universe, they cling to a love that might even resist death. The daily events in their lives are dramatized indirectly, not in bold strokes. The details of everything that defines them—from the furnishings that make their apartment as familiar as an old sweater to their passive relationship with their daughter (Haneke alumna Isabelle Huppert, in a guest appearance without razor blades)—carry out the director’s theme: that life is not about the big issues, but the sum total of the little things, like what we saved in the attic and the brand of cereal we ate for breakfast. The scenes, like the performances, are meted out quietly, in small, languid sips. Mr. Haneke’s screenplay, like his controlled direction, is lucid, without obvious overstatement. The performances are a miracle, as much about the aging of the two stars as the characters they play. Ms. Riva and Mr. Trintignant are fearless, hiding nothing from the camera. It’s a triumph of subtlety one doesn’t often see within today’s fast pace. As Anne slips sadly away, her private world turns intimate and remote. But love remains, even in the final resolution.

Old age affects us all, but at the movies it’s a subject that defies commercial success. So I have doubts about the box office future of Amour, but no reservations about its compassion and artistry. Even if it moves you to tears, the intelligence and humanity you will experience are worth the emotional stress. That doesn’t mean I want to see a lot of films about Alzheimer’s or that I will even like Michael Haneke’s next film. But don’t let Amour join the legion of “Best Films You Never Saw.” I urge you to share its sweetness and wisdom, and learn something.

rreed@observer.com

AMOUR

Running Time 127 minutes

Written and Directed by Michael Haneke

Starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, Emmanuelle Riva and Isabelle Huppert

The marvelous Murray.

Let others slobber over Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln. In this year of looking over our shoulders at past leaders with more heroic leadership qualities than the ones we’ve been getting lately, I’ll stick with Bill Murray as Franklin D. Roosevelt. There are two Hyde Parks—one in London and one in upstate New York on the Hudson River, where FDR made his summer home. Hyde Park on Hudson is an elegant, entertaining warts-and-all portrait of the 32nd U.S. president and the momentous summer weekend in 1939, on the eve of World War II, when two worlds melded and he hosted America’s first royal visit by a British monarch. The arrival of freshly anointed King George VI and his wife Elizabeth blends the stuffy formality of English manners with the down-home flavor of an American picnic in a film that is guaranteed to enthrall. It’s The King’s Speech with hot dogs and mustard.

The royal visit turned Hyde Park upside down. Still spinning from the abdication of Edward VIII and his scandalous marriage to a divorced woman and “an American, of all things,” the Brits were skeptical, but they needed support for the inevitable war. The Americans were rendered no less cautious by the presence of an inexperienced king who stuttered. To thicken the stew, there was also the urgent need on the part of his staff and advisers to hide Roosevelt’s true nature—an unquenchable passion for the ladies that turned the summer White House into a hotbed of sexual shenanigans while he was confined to a wheelchair and his wife Eleanor turned the other way, including simultaneous affairs with his loyal secretary “Missy” LeHand (Elizabeth Marvel) and his prim, dignified spinster cousin Margaret “Daisy” Suckley (warmly, engagingly and intelligently played by Laura Linney), who had a special talent for giving FDR discreet hand jobs on jaunty country drives through the back roads of Dutchess County in his cherished convertible. Based on Daisy’s private journals and diaries, discovered after her death, the rich screenplay by Richard Nelson draws a parallel between the trusting friendship that developed between two courageous, insecure world leaders (a stammering king on the verge of leading his country into war and a polio-stricken president who had just guided his people through the Great Depression) and the painful discovery by his disillusioned lovers that FDR was a very different man than the one he projected to the world at large. Threading myriad disparate elements into a rich needlepoint of humor, pathos and period detail, veteran director Roger Michell has created a sumptuously photographed feast, filmed in the actual historical locations 90 miles north of New York City. From the scurrilous details of FDR’s horny meetings behind closed doors with a variety of conquests (including New York Post owner-publisher Dorothy Schiff), to the silken settings of his mother’s manor house, everything about Hyde Park on Hudson is a thrill to discover and behold.

The cast brings it to life with sparkle and aplomb. The great Elizabeth Wilson is severe and imposing as FDR’s dragon-lady mother, Olivia Williams shows why the legendary Eleanor was an icon to millions but an abused and neglected wife to her husband in everything but affairs of state, Samuel West is a sensitive and astute king and Ms. Linney projects a powerful, pristine influence throughout as the chosen interloper—not really an outsider, but hardly a member of the inner family circle; left out of the official festivities, yet summoned at odd hours when the president needs a shoulder to lean on; opening doors to let in the light while averting prying eyes. But at the center of the action, holding the pieces together with infectious dazzle, a droll Bill Murray simply seizes the center ring and holds one’s attention from beginning to end. Wryly wringing crinkle-browed humor from FDR’s deadpan speech and singsong cadence, puffing away on his trademark cigarette holder and dropping ashes wherever he settles, with his upper teeth protruding when he smiles and his eyes twinkling when his robust sexual appetite surfaces, Mr. Murray channels the enormous humanity and popularity of the only U.S. president to be elected three times in a row with quotable one-liners and enchanting grace. He’s proud when he shows off his stamp collection, touching in his desperation for rare moments of privacy and relaxation, wickedly amusing as he admonishes Bayer aspirin for his sinus infections, and exasperating when he flies through the woods in his convertible with specially designed controls on the steering wheel and the Secret Service in hot pursuit. He’s especially moving in the poignant late-night candor he shares with the king, pouring out the whiskey and putting him at ease while
sharing his own flaws as both a leader and a man. The film delves beneath the arch reserve of the royals, revealing them as real people, too.

In the truth about how Eleanor was betrayed, making peace with her separation and remaining the first lady in name only; in the bond forged by two men whose alliance would ultimately defeat the stormclouds of global war; in the boundless charm exerted by a great man over a world in panic, there is revelation in every frame of Hyde Park on Hudson. It’s clearly intended for the masses that fell in love with The King’s Speech, but it adds an extra dimension of its own to world events. In beauty, tone, technical achievement and cinematic artistry on every level, Hyde Park on Hudson is a movie unto itself—funny, believable, historic and hugely entertaining.

rreed@observer.com

Running Time 95 minutes

Written by Richard Nelson

Directed by Roger Michell

Starring Bill Murray, Laura Linney
and Olivia Williams

Lawrence, left, and Cooper, right, in Silver Linings Playbook.

A lot of critics have lost their proverbial cool over Silver Linings Playbook, a rom-com about mental illness, ballroom dancing and the Philadelphia Eagles. I wish I knew why. It’s a slow, repetitive, meandering, mostly overacted little picture—perfectly agreeable but nothing special, and directed with a steamroller by David O. Russell. Go figure.
I have never been able to tolerate the pointless, meat-headed, masturbatory cinema of self-indulgent writer-director Mr. Russell, especially the moronic Spanking the Monkey (1994), the criminally boring Three Kings (1999) and the profoundly pretentious I Heart Huckabees, which poisoned the ozone in 2004. Six years passed, and I was shaken to my shoelaces by The Fighter (2010), the most powerful study of a down-and-out boxer since Rod Serling’s classic Requiem for a Heavyweight. The ridiculously titled Silver Linings Playbook, not in the same league as The Fighter, doesn’t do for Bradley Cooper what that movie did for Mark Wahlberg, but it does suggest that the eccentric Mr. Russell has learned a few things about where to place a camera and how to stage small scenes that add up to a satisfying whole.
For starters there’s Bradley Cooper, who’s built a solid following by devoting his entire career to trashy comedies, proving again that you can’t go broke reducing the IQs of the most undemanding segment of the public. So we got assorted loathsome Hangover Xeroxes, and Mr. Cooper got a People magazine cover. But unless you were one of the lucky theatergoers who caught his resplendent performance last summer in the sold-out production of The Elephant Man at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, then you have no idea what a prodigious talent he is. He will probably continue full-throttle turning out junk, giving his fans what they want, but I suspect that deep down inside, where his pride is, he wants to prove he can act. The movie is a mess, but there is some evidence that Mr. Russell kicked and nudged and tweaked his star into doing something besides resting on his George Clooney charm and Pepsodent smile. He actually does some acting.
He plays Pat, a bipolar substitute high-school history teacher and former athlete who returns home to Philadelphia after an eight-month meltdown in a mental hospital. Subject to irrational mood swings and violent rages, he went ballistic when his wife cheated with another faculty member. Pat beat up the guy and lost his job, his marriage, his house and his freedom, and he was sent away on a plea bargain. Now he’s back in town, in the custody of his dysfunctional parents, and determined to get back in shape, rebuild his life and win his wife back. His father (Robert De Niro), who is as crazy as he is, just wants Pat to return to what matters most in life—the religion of worshipping the Philadelphia Eagles. Meanwhile, Pat runs, works out, wears garbage bags to sweat, dispenses fun facts about American history while breaking his wife’s restraining order, and wakes his parents in the middle of the night ranting about Ernest Hemingway. Between tirades, he meets an emotionally disturbed widow named Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence) who has been fired from her job after having sex with 11 people in her office. Tiffany can compare prescription antidepressants with Pat faster than you can win Bingo at a Friday night rehab social.
Pat is on his way back down the mouse-hole, and who can blame him? His best friend from the hospital (Chris Tucker) is a perennial escapee who is forever inventing legal technicalities that never quite hold up when men in white shoes ring the doorbell carrying straitjackets. Tiffany, who turned goth slut after her policeman husband was killed playing Good Samaritan on his way home from buying lingerie at Victoria’s Secret, offers to reunite Pat with his wife if he will partner with her in a dance competition. During long rehearsals in the garage to songs by Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash, a mutual attraction blossoms, thwarted by awkward idiosyncrasies that keep the movie moving from one absurdity to another.
The football part of the movie—about how Pat’s crazy father, family members and friends bet their life savings and future on an Eagles game in a parlay that depends on at least a 5-point score in the dance competition—is so confusing I never did figure it out, and couldn’t care less. (Seems the father, who has been banned from the Eagles stadium for repeatedly starting riots, has invested everything in his beloved team in the hope of financing a cheesesteak business.) None of this makes sense, which is about par for a David O. Russell movie. It all ends in what would ordinarily seem anticlimactic, except for one thing: how can anything be anticlimactic if there isn’t much of a movie to precede it? Mr. De Niro hasn’t bothered to give a real performance for at least the past 10 years and he shows no signs of breaking precedent here. There’s nothing wrong with the overrated Jennifer Lawrence that some serious acting lessons couldn’t improve. The rest of the actors are pretty much on their own. Nothing mature or thoughtful here, which leaves Mr. Cooper to carry the show alone. He’s played it comfortable and he’s played it safe. Showing it’s fun to be bipolar, he could have played it like Jerry Lewis. Instead, he’s starting to realize the rewards of taking acting to a deeper level.
rreed@observer.com

SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK
Running Time 120 minutes
Written by David O. Russell
and Matthew Quick (novel)
Directed by David O. Russell
Starring Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence and Robert De Niro

Roberts and Hanks.

A pinch of cinnamon, a dash of sugar or a drop of Tabasco has enhanced many a disastrous, dried-out holiday feast, but even the combined flavors of Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts can’t salvage a turkey like Larry Crowne.

During a surfeit of vampires, vulgarity, 3-D action comic books, CGI effects and worse, I applaud Mr. Hanks’s effort to write, produce and direct a harmless romantic comedy that exists for no other reason than unpretentious entertainment, but even with nothing else on its mind, a so-called “comedy” should engage the senses on some level besides the funny bone. This one just lays there like road kill.

The title character is a middle-aged man who works in a chain store opening boxes and pushing long links of used shopping carts through the parking lot. He’s likeable and hard-working, he’s been voted Employee of the Month nine times, and he’s in line for a promotion. Instead, he finds himself a victim of corporate “restructuring,” a modern term for “You’re fired!” Why? Because he never went to college. How could he? He spent 20 years in the Navy instead. On top of that, his wife leaves him and takes his assets, he can’t get a loan because his house is not worth what he owes, and he has to dispose of everything, including his treasured old record collection, exchange his gas-guzzling suburban S.U.V. for a moped, and put his house on the market. Humiliated and hurt, with no job and no prospects, he cheerfully (he’s always cheerful, even when life kicks him in the gonads) enrolls in a community college. It’s not Harvard, but neither are the teachers.

Julia Roberts plays a disillusioned, sour-faced public-speaking professor named Mercedes Tainot (where do they get these names?) who teaches students to give lectures on “pop topics” such as the difference between Star Trek and Star Wars. She hates her job, convinced she’s wasting her time, but Larry knows that underneath that pickle puss is a gooey Julia Roberts grin and a honking Julia Roberts laugh just waiting to explode. Before it does, we get a glimpse of her home life (too much alcohol, marriage to a slacker geek who spends the day watching internet pornography, inevitable divorce). While waiting for her to thaw, Larry works as a short order cook in a greasy spoon diner, mastering the art of French toast and, with his new haircut and the alias “Lance Corona,” joins a motorcycle gang with a passion for feng shui. Would I lie to you? Who could make these things up?

In an endurance test of 99 minutes that feels more like running a marathon on the Equator, nothing ever happens in this movie. There is no conflict. The characters are dead on arrival. Except for a walk-on by Rita Wilson (better known as Mrs. Tom Hanks) I’ve never heard of anyone in the supporting cast, for reasons that become instantly clear. This is odd, since Mr. Hanks knows so much about acting that I expected him, at the very least, to coax a few memorable performances out of his fellow players through osmosis, if nothing else. But nothing rubs off. They’re a dull lot. Nothing sparks to life. Told in short vignettes, the film lacks shape, the lazy jokes take too long to set up, and the pauses following the punch lines seem to be waiting for a laugh track. Even the stars fail to muster much personality. When teacher and student finally kiss, it’s both unconvincing and preposterous. Who is to blame? Is it the star, who rarely makes mistakes in pulling the strings of his own career? Or was it his co-writer, Nia Vardalos, who concocted the dreadful farce My Big Fat Greek Wedding? Somebody must be held accountable for clunky, unspeakable dialogue like “You’re whining like a goo-goo ga-ga baby.” Explaining her drunk scene the night before, Ms. Roberts says “I was worked up and under the influence of the demon rum.” I mean, who talks like that outside the pages of paperbacks for hyper-thyroidal teens sold in airport departure lounges?

I wouldn’t go so far as announcing that Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts have passed their prime, but even if you wander into this congealed mess with nothing more demanding in mind than to spend a little time with two charming favorites, do not expect Forrest Gump or Pretty Woman. Congenial is the word for Larry Crowne, but it’s as flat as an ironing board.

rreed@observer.com

LARRY CROWNE

Running time 99 minutes

Written by Tom Hanks and Nia Vardalos

Directed by Tom Hanks

Starring Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts

1/4

Spacey.

It’s official: I’ve lost my mojo (temporarily, I hope) and I’m ready for the cracker factory. How else to explain the fact that I actually had a very good time laughing myself silly at a rude romp called Horrible Bosses? Crudely contrived, filled with the kind of sexual gags, filthy dialogue, homophobic jibes, misogynistic insults and racial slurs that bring new meaning to political incorrectness, it’s one of those revolting, raunch-fueled movies churned out in their sleep by the Farrelly brothers and Judd Apatow that I usually hate, but with real cleverness, off-center wit and edgy imagination. Imagine an X-rated Three Stooges farce, and you get the picture.

The plot is simple: Three upscale slacker buddies in suits are so abused in their jobs they want to kill their bosses. Nick, played by the appealing, immensely talented and criminally underrated Jason Bateman, is a wage slave to a big management corporation who is so overworked he hasn’t had sex in six months with anyone other  than himself. After eight years of sacrifice, working 12-hour days and sucking up to  one of the most evil bosses on the planet (Kevin Spacey, hilarious in the toxic mendacity department), Nick deserves a raise. Instead, he gets a wrist watch and a pink slip. Dale (Charlie Day, from  It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) is a dental assistant who works for a crazy, self-centered, sexually obsessed predator who grabs his crotch in a hammerlock hold while she drills root canals (Jennifer Aniston, in the funniest role—maybe only funny role?—of her career). Kurt (Jason Sudeikis) is the account manager at a chemical company where his beloved boss (Donald Sutherland) dies and leaves everything to his sleazy, oversexed cokehead son (an unrecognizable Colin Farrell with a bald head and rolling eyes like targets on a rifle range). These are bosses from hell. Foaming at the mouth with the malignant villainy of Richard III, Mr. Spacey snarls at Mr. Bateman, “I own you. You are my bitch. So get used to it.  You’re in for the long haul.”

Fed up with sexual  harassment, slimy office  politics and no possibility of parole, these spineless losers take stock and decide their only options are misery or murder. So they spend the majority of the movie plotting ways to rid themselves of their albatrosses, opening up a string of possibilities for mirth and mayhem that end in myriad surprises. After getting the plot of Strangers on a Train mixed up with Throw Momma From the Train, they give up the idea of killing each other’s bosses and settle on hiring a hit man. The first one is an S&M master who thinks they’ve ordered a kink job to pee on them. Mortified, they end up in a dangerous black neighborhood and ante up their last $5,000 to hire a professional killer with a name you can’t print in a newspaper (Jamie Foxx). After taking their money, this terrifying thug turns out to  have done some time, all right—for nothing more serious than video piracy.

And on it goes, spiraling into one wild, spontaneous comic situation after another. Accidentally, bodies fall, corpses mount, fate plays the trump card and nothing wraps up as expected. In the zaniest scenes, inspiration comes from great movie references, and these modern Marx Brothers are always one step ahead of both the killers and the cops. The psycho humor in Horrible Bosses literally smokes, thanks to balanced direction by Seth Gordon, a cockeyed script by Michael Markowitz, John Francis Daley and  Jonathan Goldstein and truly creative work by the entire cast. Mr. Bateman is perfect as the brains of the trio and Mr. Day is delightful as the lunatic who does everything wrong. As much as I hated Mr. Sudeikis in the nauseating Hall Pass (he’s also one of the worst things that ever happened to Saturday Night Live), he makes a believable group lover boy, all cleaned up, close-shaved and hair neatly parted. Mr. Farrell’s creepy comb-over and trashy office full of hot and cold running prostitutes (if I’m not mistaken, one was a dude) are twisted comic profiles close to legendary status. They all left me in stitches, in spite of myself. Jennifer Aniston simulating fellatio with a banana?  What are you waiting for?

rreed@observer.com

HORRIBLE BOSSES

Running time 100 minutes

Written by Michael Markowitz, John Francis Daley, Jonathan  Goldstein

Directed by Seth Gordon

Starring Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, Charlie Day, Kevin Spacey

3/4

Hunnam.

It’s rare to see difficult, controversial issues explored in a contemporary narrative film, and The Ledge, written and directed by Matthew Chapman, is fearless about the danger of commercial failure it obviously faces. At a time when most movies are not about anything important, this one deserves credit for tackling unpopular themes like religion-fueled homophobia and atheism. It eventually fails, not because of its philosophical ideas, but because it introduces so many of them at the same time that even a viewer with a score pad can’t keep up.

A distraught young man named Gavin (British actor Charlie Hunnam, the original  lead in the original English television production of Queer as Folk) steps out on  the top tier of a tall building to commit suicide. A cop named Hollis (Terrence Howard) is dispatched to talk him out of it. This is not a good day for either of them. Gavin is a hotel manager who is having an unhappy affair with a troubled hotel employee and accounting major named Shana (Liv Tyler, too long in the tooth to be a convincing undergraduate). Hollis is a devout Catholic and loyal husband who has just discovered he’s been sterile since birth and suddenly realizes his two children are not his own. Gavin also has a roommate with AIDS, which saddles the film with another weighty issue to contemplate, and Shana also has a fanatical born-again Christian husband named Joe (Patrick Wilson) who causes problems for them all.

Gavin has a deadline. If he doesn’t jump by 12 noon, somebody else will die, for reasons that are not revealed until the end. “On the subject of faith,” the cop asks the man on the ledge, “do you have any?” This gives the cynical white man with no hope and the disillusioned but spiritual black man with the survival pep talk plenty of time to knock around numerous viewpoints on death, adultery, minority freedoms, gay rights and the distrust earned by the human race in general. As partners on the ledge, Mr. Hunnam’s conflicted Gavin and Mr. Howard’s distracted Hollis seem more believable than the rest of the characters in the movie put together. They could easily trade places.

Since neither can leave the scene, their stories are related in flashbacks. We see Shana and Joe invite their new neighbors, Gavin and his gay roommate Chris, to dinner, mistaking  them for lovers. Gavin storms out when Joe references a passage in the Bible condemning them to hell, then offers to pray for their sins. It’s a rupture that grows deeper when Gavin falls in love with the suppressed Shana, who is sexually unfulfilled but obligated to Joe for curing her drug addiction. Gavin has been deceived by Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and the death of a daughter. God is just another imaginary friend. To Gavin, God creates wars, genocides,  earthquakes and plagues. To Joe, the beauty of eternal salvation is that God gives life meaning. It all turns into an abstract debate between blind faith and a failure to accept heaven as a valid concept without a shred of evidence. Good ideas, to be sure, for a better movie, but the characters in The Ledge exist for the sole purpose of argument, and the script is too narrow to engage the viewer unconditionally.

No spoilers, but the talk all leads to the inevitable confrontations between Joe and Gavin, Joe and Shana, Gavin and Hollis, and Joe reading the 23rd Psalm with a loaded gun in  his hand. Although no setting is identified, the film was shot in Baton Rouge, La., and the river view in the  background is clearly the muddy Mississippi. The direction is perfunctory, the actors all good with the exception of Liv Tyler, who looks less like Ava Gardner than usual—probably because she’s stripped of all makeup and drab as a bone. In the supporting cast, I especially liked Christopher Gorham in the small but pivotal role of Gavin’s gay roommate Chris. The atheist makes the most challenging case for debate, but he’s too arrogant and close-minded to be a true liberal, while the fundamentalist fanatic spouts the kind of extremist fire-and-brimstone dogma and religiously inspired hate that makes him not only unsympathetic in 2011, but naïve. The only suspense in The Ledge centers on one question: Will he jump or not? You eventually find out, but it’s hardly worth the wait.

rreed@observer.com

THE LEDGE

Running time 101 minutes

Written and directed by Matthew Chapman

Starring Liv Tyler, Charlie Hunnam, Patrick Wilson, Terence Howard

2/4